Greetings from the Vodka Sea Read Free Page B

Sondra’s belief that people had to become comfortable with their bodies and with the image of their bodies they carried inside their heads, before they could become comfortable with minds and egos and souls.
    So Sondra agreed to pose, although “pose” is an extreme exaggeration. They had only just finished making love for the first time (Avram coming, almost the instant he’d entered her, under the stern watch of Che Guevara ) when he caught her unawares. He’d gotten up on the pretext of going to the washroom, and Sondra saw the flash a moment later. Avram stood like a guilty child as Sondra’s eyes adjusted to the light.
    â€œI want . . . I want to have a picture to remember you.”
    And that was Sondra’s opportunity. On the one hand, she felt violated; on the other, there was a certain charm to his passivity, to his fear. So Sondra did not object and did not, as she easily could have done given the circumstances, the photograph from his hand. Instead, she let him keep it but insisted that he must now pose for her. She made him lie on the bed with his head on the pillow. At first he tried to cover himself with the blanket, but she kicked it aside roughly.
    â€œPut one arm behind your head,” she told him, adding, when he did not immediately respond, “quickly now. And now lift your leg a little. The other leg, please. Just let your foot lie on the bed.”
    He seemed willing to comply with her every instruction, and with each order and response she found herself growing more forceful.
    â€œNow touch yourself, with your free hand. Not there!” She leaned down and positioned his hand over his tired cock. “I want you to play with yourself. Close your eyes and play with yourself. And keep it up until I finish taking the picture.”
    How she’d finally got him into bed was another story. It took weeks of gentle manipulation to get in a position where she could make her move. Eventually, he allowed her to come up to his apartment. They stood by the doorway for a very long time, but each time she leaned forward to kiss him, he would recoil and turn his head. She would retreat, and he would turn to look at her again with his soft eyes. Advance, recoil, retreat. Advance, recoil, retreat. Finally she’d had enough. She pushed him back against the door and kissed him hard on the lips. When he tried to turn his head, she held his chin firmly with one hand. Soon she pushed her tongue into his mouth, and she could feel his body responding. That’s when, and this is the funny part, she picked him up (surprised at her own strength, her own force) and carried him into the apartment. She looked around the barren room and saw, under a huge black-light poster of Che, a thin mattress lying directly on the floor. She dropped him on the mattress, which served as his bed and, no doubt, his couch and kitchen table and work desk, and ordered him to undress. And when he didn’t, she started to do it herself.
    Sondra did not keep the photograph. It neither aroused nor disturbed her but only de-eroticized the experience. This skinny boy caught in the unflattering shadows was not the beautiful young man she’d taken to bed. She tore up the picture to give the moment entirely back to memory.
    Ã‰tienne had laughed when she told him about the picture Avram had taken (laughed, that is, not in a condescending way, but with empathy, from the perspective of one who understood completely the pitfalls of taking a lover). He laughed again when she told him he she was going to get it back.
    â€œTo the victor go the spoils,” he said, perhaps to tease her, or perhaps because he knew that, at that moment, he needed something elegant to say. And he laughed one more time, almost to himself, and again, not to put Sondra down but in simple appreciation of her adventure.
    It was a season for adventure. The Cross kidnapping, the FLQ, the declaration of martial law, not to mention the